1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology to manage application licenses.
2. Description of the Related Art
An application license is a example of a license. The application license is an electronic data issued by a computer in accordance with, for example, agreement between a software application user and a software application provider that governs the usage or redistribution of the application. A typical license grants an end-user permission to use one or more copies of the application. Regarding distribution, there are devices which are connected to a network and on which an application with a license can be installed such as by downloading them to the devices via the network. There are also techniques that invalidate applications, configuration options, and licenses thereof by using a license issuing server (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-107468). According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-107468, a license is invalidated in order to transfer an application preinstalled on a device to another device.
According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-107468, when licenses should be invalidated, it is necessary to manually invalidate these licenses one by one. Moreover, for the prevention of unauthorized use, a history of installation and also a history of invalidation are left behind on a device.
Multifunction peripherals conventionally have no mechanism to delete a history so that an unauthorized operation without license cannot be easily performed on the market. Thus, if a mismatch occurs in a license management system, it is difficult for a serviceman or user to restore the system.